Previously Smashing Magazine's Typography editor, and currently on the Experts Panel, Alex Charchar has had his writing published and referenced in some pretty cool places around the web and in print. He's fanatical about design, letterpress, espresso, and podcasting. Most of all, he likes helping designers and creatives hone their craft. You can visit Retinart to find more of his writing..

How can you be sure you're moving your design problem in a straight line? That you're moving directly to a solution? From client to payment, from product to audience?

How certain are you of what the second step in your process is? Or the third? Or how long each will take, or if any should be removed? Are they all useful? Do any need improvement? Is each done with aim and purpose? How often do you fall-forward with momentum, rather than move with reason?

Many of us struggle silently with mental health problems and many more are affected by them, either directly or indirectly. It’s {Geek} Mental Help Week and we would like to help raise awareness with a couple of articles exploring these issues. – Ed.

We’ve all experienced that burnout moment. It’s that moment when we’ve got nothing left to give but keep trying anyway, when we’re left without much more than a shell to live in and motions to go through.

We’re fried and broken and wish desperately for our work to make sense, for our energy to come back, for things to be fun and as they were. In such moments all we want is for our work to feel like our work and not like torture.

Many of us struggle silently with mental health problems and many more are affected by them, either directly or indirectly. It's {Geek} Mental Help Week and we would like to help raise awareness with a couple of articles exploring these issues. – Ed.

Where is it?! It has to be here somewhere. It use to be so easy. What happened? Somewhere, somewhere, somewhere. That idea is somewhere. It’s here, it has to be. This is where I’ve always found it. But there’s nothing. The only shapes I find here are well worn and boring, dints still obvious even with fresh paint. Oh so boring. So boring and so often used because they’re just “fine.” Too easily used. Too easily reached for and offered up as if they were new again.

Didn’t this used to be easy? Didn’t fresh ideas arrive without being asked for? Why did I have to wait until the last moment to even notice, wait until moments before these old dented ideas have to be presented?

I can’t imagine any other industry in which so much change happens so quickly. If you stop paying attention for a week, it can feel like you’ve not been listening for a year. There’s so much to learn. Falling behind is easy, too. We might be in the middle of a major project, so we put off learning about this newfangled thing called Sass or Node.js or even quickly experimenting with the new Bootstrap or Foundation that everyone is raving about.

Before we know it, we have these elephants of missing knowledge wandering around our minds, reminding us of what we should know and do but haven’t found the time for. Even just looking at beautiful work and seeing what new technique we could use ourselves can seem like too big a task when we’re swamped with projects. So, we tell ourselves we’ll come back to it later. But later never shows up. The guilt definitely does, but not that elusive deadline of later.

Having started his career studying under some of the best typographic minds in the world, Khajag Apelian not only is a talented type and graphic designer, unsurprisingly, but also counts Disney as a client, as well as a number of local and not-for-profit organizations throughout the Middle East.

Even more impressive is Khajag’s willingness to take on work that most people would find too challenging. Designing a quality typeface is a daunting task when it’s only in the Latin alphabet. Khajag goes deeper still, having designed a Latin-Armenian dual-script typeface in four weights, named "Arek", as well as an Arabic adaptation of Typotheque’s Fedra Display.

Few applications feel as complete as Adobe’s InDesign. First released in 1999 as a direct attack against the then-industry standard, Quark, the page-layout application has been made faster and more feature-rich with each iteration. But even the best applications lack some features.

Luckily, Adobe realized this some years ago and opened the doors to allow designers to expand this beloved set of tools through plugins. Many designers don’t realize how powerful InDesign can be, especially when expanded through plugins and scripts.

Today, too many websites are still inaccessible. In our new book Inclusive Design Patterns, we explore how to craft flexible front-end design patterns and make future-proof and accessible interfaces without extra effort. Hardcover, 312 pages. Get the book →

Meet the new Sketch Handbook, our brand new Smashing book that will help you master all the tricky, advanced facets of Sketch. Filled with practical examples and tutorials in 12 chapters, the book will help you become more proficient in your work. Get the book.

Meet SmashingConf San Francisco 2017, featuring front-end ingredients, UX recipes and nothing but practical beats from the hidden corners of the web. Only practical, real-life techniques and recipes you can learn from. Get your ticket now!